There was a period there where we said “But how are we going to connect it? Will we need to mount a Wii-mote in it?” And right around that time, on Make or Instructables, I can’t remember where – we saw it on Gizmodo, somebody published a hack about how to use a Wii Nunchuck to control an R/C helicopter and we thought: Whoa, that’s really pretty cool. And we looked and sure enough they weren’t just wiring to the potentiometers in the controller, they were using the output signals and there was a bunch of software published that showed that you could get the signal data from the Nunchuck controller. And I thought that was neat that they’d done that, but I also thought, if I can pretend to be a Wii Nunchuck controller I can talk to the Wii and we can go the other way.

Somewhere along the line, somebody came up with the idea of “making toys come to life” and we thought: That’s good, that’s fantastic, in hindsight the best idea we’ve ever had. And we looked at different ways of connecting the toys. We looked at little contacts on the toys, different RFID techniques, and we finally settled on one of those, partly because it was an ISO standard, and partly because there were open source libraries published to access the RFID controller.

Blake’s great post interviews the guys and really gets in-depth into the process of developing the game, in particular the Portal. The image above shows the prototype in all its hacked-together glory, including part of a kitchen sink!

Now the news about Skylanders Giants has subsided, for the time being at least, I’ve been picking through what else happened at the event I attended in New York last week.

There are a few things I need to collate and publish about Skylanders Giants (like my discussion with Toys for Bob co-founder Paul Reiche about their approach to marketing the toys), I knew that much. However, what I had missed was Jerry Storch talking candidly about new exclusive Skylanders coming to Toys R Us in March and April.

Legendary Trigger Happy, Iridescent Blue Bash and Sun Burn figures continue the tantalizing drip feed of characters that have kept my family playing the game even though we finished the main adventure some months ago. In particular it is the challenges that each new character unlocks that we have focused on. Completing these for each figure has become a minor obsession over the last few weeks.

These new figures and the new Dragon’s Peak adventure pack was all my kids wanted to talk about this morning at breakfast. Here’s the low down on the new Skylanders figure announcements:

With the success of the first Skylanders game, not to mention the toys and the related hunt-them-down-in-stores sub game, it is inevitable that there will be a followup game. The question is: How soon, and what form will it take?

Although it is still early days since the game launched in October 2011, and we have yet to see the full cohort of figures and adventure packs released ($7.99 on Amazon), there are already a few signs pointing to the next Skylanders iteration.

Firstly, as highlighted by Fusible, a series of new URLs has been registered for various combinations of the terms Skylanders Giants. This suggests that the powers that be are getting their ship in order before any official announcement is made:

skylandersgiants.dk

skylandersgiants.it

skylandersgiants.net

skylandersgiantsgame.com

skylandersgiantsgame.net

theskylandersgiants.com

theskylandersgiants.net

skylandersgiants.fr

Secondly, this news coincides with the upcoming New York Toy Fair where the first game was announced. Although I was a little skeptical at first, these suggestions seem credible on a couple of counts. The timing makes sense in terms of announcements and future plans. Also the extension of the Skylanders universe to include Giant versions of the toys would be a intelligent way to offer new figures while not making the original set of toys redundant.

Today in our “Meet the Skylanders” series we look at the two Air element characters that are available: Sonic Boom and Whirlwind, two winged dragons that look quite similar but behave very differently in the game.

With the other two Air element Skylanders not yet released (Zeus-styled Lightning Rod and turtle-powered Warnado) this is one of the least populated elements which can mean they are particularly hard to find. However, with fresh stock of both Sonic Boom and Whirlwind appearing on Amazon this week, lets take a close look at what makes these two tick.

Today in our “Meet the Skylanders” series we look at two very different Fire element characters. Eruptor and Flameslinger offer different abilities and upgrades that means they suit very different players. Along with Ignitor that we discussed previously and the as-yet-unreleased Sunburn, these two complete the Fire element characters.

Here’s the low down so you can decide whether they should be in your Skylanders army.

Dino-rang: Another character available in both Single and Triple packs. However he is considerably rarer than other Earth element characters because he wasn’t released until the second wave of figures in December 2011.

Of the second wave figures he was also unique in completing an element set and offering a boost to their Magic stat. All this combines with his close range projectile attacks to make Dino-rang a much sought after character ($30 Amazon).

Dino-rang was the first of the second wave figures that I purchased, and it was because he could complete my Earth Skylanders line up that attracted me to him most. He soon became a strong favorite in our family. The kids got on well with him as he is the fastest character in the group, and also has the highest armor.

Out of the gate he also has an excellent medium range boomerang attack that can be cheaply upgraded (Basalt Boomerangs). Like the other Earth Skylanders, you have a choice whether you want to develop Dino-rang in an attacking (via the Grand Boomerang Master path) or defensive (via Earthen Avenger path) direction.

After the popularity of the second wave of Skylanders figures, I’ve been eagerly keeping my eyes peeled ready to get my pre-order in for the next wave of figures. Then, this post on the Skylanders Facebook page sent me rummaging through Amazon’s search.

I’m glad I did because among the slightly confusing mis-listings and third-party items I discovered the following figures:

A bit more research revealed that these have also been listed on Amazon.de so it looks like we will be seeing an official launch of them very soon. If these figures follow the same pattern as the previous Skylanders releases it may be worth getting in an early pre-order, I ended up paying over retail to get hold of those figures and I’m determined not to be bitten twice.

GeekDad has devoted a fair amount of time to exploring Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure in recent weeks, and with good reason; it’s an amazingly competent title that’s perfect for both parents and children. And as the blog’s most outspoken portable gamer, I am inclined to say that the 3DS iteration might just be my favorite.

Given my disappointment with the latest Activision-published X-Men and Spider-Man, games, I was truly blown away by the level of polish apparent in the handheld version of Skylanders. The game marks Vicarious Visions’ first foray into the space of the 3D portable, but they clearly have a better handle on the potential of the handheld than any other 3rd party developer. The controls are perfectly responsive, the art direction dazzling and the 3D effects some of the best I’ve encountered.

I’ve been playing Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure quite a bit the last few days (both in videogame and Skylanders Chess form). But it wasn’t until today that I realized the stats published on the official Skylanders site were only for the character cards you use on the web game, rather than the starting stats of the characters in the PS3, 360, Wii, PC and 3DS games.

So today I pooled my collection with fellow blogger Steph Flemming so we could work through each of the characters in the game and write down what their starting stats are. I was quite surprised to find out some Skylanders characters I thought would be slow were actually quite nippy, and likewise a few that I thought wouldn’t be as strong that actually had a high Critical Hit stat.